


Knight of Roses, Queen of Snakes

by HomuraBakura



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's
Genre: F/F, Fantasy, Hero's Journey, Immortal!Misty, Immortals, Knight!Sherry, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Queen!Misty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 18:41:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8811835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HomuraBakura/pseuds/HomuraBakura
Summary: The war between the Realm of Roses and the Land of Serpents has continued for longer than anyone can remember, and more than one Knight of Roses has been charged--and failed--to defeat the Queen of Snakes.  Sherry LeBlanc is the newest Knight of Roses, and she reaches the stronghold of the Queen herself...only to find that perhaps the world isn't quite as simple as she thought it was.





	

**Author's Note:**

> btw Misty is the Queen of Snakes because snakes are a reptile like her gecko Earthbound Immortal but Queen of Geckos sounded fucking sTUPID

She kicked the door down, sword raised and makeshift shield up as she crashed into the room to find—

Nothing.

Ser Sherry Leblanc hesitated, heaving for breath. Her armor had never felt so _heavy_. The normally shining white was, by now, bent, dented, dirtied, more rust in color than platinum. Her helmet had been lost ages ago, and her hair had refused to stay in a bun, so she had chopped it all off with her sword. It had grown in oddly, a little longer on the left side of her face than her right, still barely below her chin again, a chin littered with more than a few scars that matched the rest of her face and her skin beneath the armor. Like the rest of her, her sword looked as though it had taken more than a beating; chipped along a few edges and almost tarnished in place, blood that she hadn't been able to clean from it stained to the flat. She didn't even have a real shield anymore—it was just a hunk of heavy wood bark that she had picked up from the woods surrounding the castle.

She tightened her fist around the pommel, trying to catch her breath.

It had been a journey spanning months, but she was here...here in the heart of darkness itself. She felt like a century had passed since she had been given the glyph of the goddesses, presented to her by her Queen of Roses. Since the Queen of the Realm of Roses had knighted Sherry, and sent her on her quest to defeat the witch, the Queen of Snakes in the Land of Serpents. Sherry had fought her way through hordes of monsters to reach here, the final stronghold—she would defeat the witch once and for all, and she would finally be able to return home in glory, a true knight of Roses, able to finally _rest._

Except...

Except there was no one here.

Sherry stepped cautiously into the thin darkness. This room... _was_ the room at the top of the tower, wasn't it? She hadn't been caught by any of the witch's illusions? No, impossible; the Glyph of the Goddesses protected her. She had already tested that a million times over on this journey. It was the only way she was still alive.

But this room was so...tiny. It was so austere...more like a monk's cell than a witch queen's final stronghold. Sherry could make out a faint outline of a rickety table, a low slung cot....a panic overtook her as she thought _this is a trap—this is a cell for_ me _._ She quickly stepped back into the light of the hallway, before the door could be slammed on her or something.

Then something moved in the shadows, and she lifted her sword with a swear.

The woman rose up as though she were a shadow herself. Sherry tensed up, ready. This was going to be a fight of magical proportions, and she was more than ready to—

“Oh, put that down, you'll put someone's eye out,” the voice said. It sounded...young, Sherry realized. No older than herself at nineteen winters.

She tightened her grip on her sword.

“My name is Ser Sherry LeBlanc,” she said confidently. “I have come from the—”

“From the Queen of Roses, yes, and you have the Glyph of the Goddesses, with which to strike down the cruel witch from the Land of Serpents,” the woman said, and Sherry could almost hear an eye roll in there. “I'm very aware of who you are, Ser LeBlanc...”

Sherry swallowed, lowering her stance.

“Then you know why I've come,” she said.

“I do.”

“Then—”

“Sh....sh...”

The voice had so much authority that Sherry thought she was standing in front of the Queen of Roses again, and she was momentarily silenced. It was time enough for the woman to wave a hand through the darkness. Sherry flinched, expecting a magical blast, but...

A few torches came to life inside the room, finally illuminating it. It was just as simple and austere as Sherry had first thought, and...and the witch herself...

She looked far more ordinary than Sherry had imagined. She had thought she'd be beguiled by some eerily seductive form, or perhaps come face to face with a horrendous monster. But this woman could have been walking down in the village and Sherry wouldn't have noted her as anyone threatening.

She _was_ beautiful, though, she found herself thinking. Long raven hair glimmering faintly violet that flowed down her back, blending into the heavy black shawl she drew around her pale shoulders. Her clothing was of ordinary make, something that Sherry thought might be scratchy, even, against the skin. The only thing that denoted her as a Queen of Serpents, or as royalty at all, was the tear drop-shaped green stone that hung on her forehead. Piercing blue eyes glimmered from her face, cutting through the fire-lit dimness to meet Sherry's eyes.

The woman let out a soft breath.

“My,” she said. “You are more beautiful than my scrying could express.”

Sherry felt her balance briefly go out from under her—that was _not_ what she had expected to hear. She regained herself quickly, a horrible heat spreading over her face as she realized she had let herself be unbalanced so easily.

“I am not hear to listen to you play games,” she hissed. “I'm here to—”

“To take my life, yes,” the woman said, twirling a bit of her hair around her finger. “Why?”

Once again, Sherry felt her stomach drop out.

Because—why did it need an answer?? This woman was the Queen of Serpents—the Realm of Roses was dying because of the snakes that ate at their roots and spread disease and death wherever they went. Sherry had traveled through this desolate realm for months, and seen nothing but horrors. It was a time-honored fate of her line of knights to seek the Glyph of the Goddesses so that they could try to end the Serpents' reign once and for all. The Serpents had been the ones to declare war on the Roses first, hadn't they? Sherry was defending her home...her people...

“Because I'm the villain of your narrative,” the woman said, without waiting for Sherry to answer. “And you are the hero. And that's what heroes and villains do, isn't it? They fight each other.”

Sherry felt a twist in her stomach. No, she couldn't—she couldn't let this woman's words get to her.

The woman tugged on her shawl a little tighter, stepping closer to Sherry. Sherry flinched, lifting her sword across her to defend herself, but the woman came no closer.

“And what will you do, hero,” she said, “if the villain refuses to fight back?”

Sherry felt her lips part. The woman took another step closer, so that she could reach Sherry's blade. Sherry couldn't move as the woman's fingers briefly danced over the edge of the blade, lips parting as she considered it.

“This blade has seen so much,” she murmured, running a finger just over the flat, near to the edge as though she might cut her finger. “It has carried you far, hasn't it?”

“Don't toy with me,” Sherry hissed.

The woman only smiled—but it was a heavy, tired smile. She lifted her other hand to the blade, letting the shawl slide from her shoulders, revealing the shoulderless, crimson red dress beneath. She ran her other hand up the underside of the blade, and Sherry shuddered softly at the sight of those delicate, pale hands. They looked...so soft.

After a long, strange moment, the woman sighed. Then she pressed both her hands to the flat on other side of the blade, twisting the sword. Sherry sucked in a breath, thinking that the woman meant to grab the sword and steal it from her—

But the woman only moved the tip until it was resting right at the hollow of her throat, poising the blade just over her collarbone.

Her piercing eyes found Sherry's, and Sherry found that she could not look away.

“Complete your mission, knight,” she whispered. “I will not stop you.”

Sherry's lips were so dry. What...what was this...? Months of journeying and...and this was...

“Is this some kind of trick?” Sherry hissed. “What do you mean by this?”

The woman simply sighed, eyes closing briefly. She still held the blade steady so that the very tip brushed against her neck.

“I'm so tired, Ser Leblanc,” she whispered. “I watched you and your predecessors cut through my lands, time after time after time...all because I created this war. All because of a mistake...”

Her eyes fluttered back open, and Sherry thought for a moment that her eyes looked much like the sacred spring where Sherry had been baptized as the Queen of Roses' new champion.

“Do you know why the war began?” she whispered.

Sherry shook her head slowly.

“No one knows, it's been too long,” she said.

Centuries of warfare—only the Queen of Roses and the Queen of Serpents, ancient queens with forever-lives, would have remembered where it started.

The queen's fingers wrapped around the blade, squeezing lightly—but not enough to break the skin on her fingers.

“I thought she killed my dearest brother,” she murmured. “I found him....strangled to death by a twisting of vines...rose vines.”

A tear escaped her eye, rolling silently down her face—but her expression did not change. Sherry felt like she was choking. What...what was she saying?

“I thought, of course...the Queen of Roses was the culprit...who else could it be...? After all, a young immortal like him, a relation to a Queen...that was always dangerous. It always has been. Of course it was her. Of course she killed him. Of course I didn't believe her when she begged, when she cried and promised that she had never touched him.”

The queen sighed, letting her head fall back slightly, looking up towards the ceiling.

“I spent hundreds of years trying to kill her—hundred of years fighting off more and more heroes, just like you...you are the only one that's gotten this far.”

She laughed, but it was a hollow sound.

“How blind I've been...and I call myself a clairvoyant.”

She opened her eyes again, bringing the sword once more to her neck.

“Finish me, knight,” she said. “I have dragged you and your people into centuries of war over a conclusion I should not have reached. The Queen of Roses wasn't lying...she did not kill my brother. And I killed thousands of hers for something she did not do...lost thousands of my own for a revenge that did not need to be taken. My land is already stripped dead from using my magic so much.”

She swallowed, her throat bobbing beneath the blade.

Sherry's hand trembled.

The woman was right there. All she had to do was press forward with just a little bit of force, and the Queen of Serpents was dead. Her mission, the mission that her father had once attempted and failed at, that a thousand others had tried and died for, was almost at an end. All it would take...was to kill the woman that submitted herself to her.

 _This is a trick_ , Sherry thought, throat dry. _The witch is playing with me_.

But...she thought as she looked deep into those clear eyes....she didn't so...

There was so much fatigue there, in her otherwise beautiful face untouched by time. Sherry had seen that tiredness once before—veiled, thinly, behind the eyes of her Queen of Roses when she had knighted Sherry, when she had knelt down for a moment, pressed her forehead to Sherry's, and begged her, in a whisper, to finish this war.

_She isn't lying._

_She doesn't want this anymore._

Her fist tightened around her hilt. Perhaps it was for the best to simply end it, then....

She sucked in a breath, the blade already at the tip of the woman's throat. The woman sighed, almost a breath of relief, closing her eyes.

“At least my final sight is your eyes,” she murmured. “I have not seen such beautiful eyes in some time.”

Sherry's hand...relaxed.

The woman's eyes opened with surprise as the blade slipped away from her throat, as Sherry let her arm fall to her side.

“I will not,” she whispered.

The queen's lips parted, surprised shining in her eyes.

“I have killed so many,” she said. “Probably people you cared for.”

“Then you do not get to flee away to death so quickly,” Sherry said. “Stand up and acknowledge your crimes. Work to fix them, and do not leave your country to wither more than it already has. Or find someone else to kill you—because I will not.”

Her voice grew stronger as she spoke, until the sound rang against the stone.

The queen's eyes widened, her mouth hanging partially open. She raised a hand to her mouth, pressed her hand against it for a moment. Then she shook her head.

“She does pick good ones, doesn't she?” she mumbled. “Knight of Roses....you truly are a hero, are you not?”

“Don't flatter me,” Sherry said, scowling.

The woman actually laughed softly, covering it with one hand, and Sherry realized that she thought...it was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

“Will you do one other thing for me, then?” she said, as her eyes rose back up to Sherry. “Will you carry a message back to the Queen of Roses? Tell her that I...I want to speak with her again. I want to right what I did to her...to everyone.”

Sherry found, for the first time in a long time, a faint smile coming to her lips. She crossed her sword over her breast and bowed once, extending a gloved hand to her.

“You could come with me to tell her yourself,” she said. “Your Majesty.”

The woman actually laughed.

“You are...almost too much, Ser LeBlanc,” she said.

“Sherry,” Sherry said.”

“What?”

“Ser LeBlanc was, and always will be, my father.”

The woman smiled.

“Ser Sherry,” she said softly. “Then...you may call me by name as well.”

She put her hand atop Sherry's outstretched one, and Sherry could almost feel the gratitude that washed out of her eyes like a waterfall.

“I am Misty.”

 


End file.
